Voyage round my house

John Mortimer lives in a house in the Chilterns built by his father 71 years ago. He loves the continuity, even if much is altered in the village around him

I’m writing this in the house my father built in 1932, when I was nine years old. It’s the house where most of my childhood took place, the house where my children played in the garden. Nobody has lived here except my family, and I find it impossible to imagine this as a home for strangers.

My father was a successful barrister practising in divorce, so it would be true to say that the house was built on the proceeds of adultery, cruelty, and wilful neglect to provide reasonable maintenance. We used to live in a flat in the Temple, which was handy for the law courts. Then my father remembered a village on the end of the Chilterns where he had visited a friend, and he rented a cottage there for 10 shillings a week. It was there we spent weekends and holidays; we had no running water or